Re: gastroliths (was Re:Giant carnivorous geese)

["Steve Brusatte" <dinoland@lycos.com>]

On Sun, 25 Aug 2002 21:58:28  
 philidor11 wrote:
>HP Wroe observed:
><The allusion to gastroliths in Proteles is real cute and 
>another eye-opener. If true - they are converging on birds in 
>their use of 
>gastroliths to circumvent constraints imposed by a degenerate 
>dentition.>
>
>Yes, if a predator using gastroliths has a recent predator ancestor 
>which did not use gastroliths, then this could be a problem solving 
>behavior. 

Certainly.  I wish I knew a) what _Proteles_ potential ancestors were, b) their 
feeding style, and c) if they possessed gastroliths.  It would certainly be 
interesting if _Proteles_ had a bone-crushing ancestor and co-opted gastroliths 
to crush chitinous insect exoskeletons.

>Swallowing large stones is not 
>a random behavior, though it could, I suppose, arise from eating 
>whole an animal which did use gastroliths.  

Well, the entire animal would have to be eaten, which might be difficult.  This 
is similar to the hypothesis that early herbivorous tetrapods (diadectomorphs 
mostly) ate their parents' faeces in order to injest the necessary bacteria to 
ferment foliage.  If a predator were to accidentally injest gastroliths, it 
would be difficult to parlay this into a long-term evolutionary scenario, 
though.

>Definitely interesting.

Sure is.

Steve

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